EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

To be fair to the mayor, he’d just done his London-is-great spiel at his Education Conference when he was ambushed by a question that caught his attention. What did he think, asked the Press Association, about expanding grammar schools?

To be fair to the mayor, he didn’t answer that, but he did think out loud. What do you think of academic selection, he asked the room? What’s wrong with it? It never did any harm to the chap who was always at the bottom of the Mayor’s year group at Eton. He asked for a show of hands: did we use academic selection? He was interested that we did. The crowd started to rustle a bit and someone shouted ‘we do it all the time’.

To be fair to the Mayor, he spotted that the temperature had dropped. ‘I’ve lost my audience!’ he wailed. People got a bit cross, in a teacherly way, with muttering and tutting. We’re always irritated at suggestions that we don’t measure achievement or progress, or arrange our schools in order to support them.

To be fair to the Mayor (and I may only be saying this because it rhymes) he didn’t say he was proposing grammar schools or the 11+. He was concerned that we should support those who would lose out but he believed academic competition is key to success. Why does it work in the public and independent schools, he asked? I have several answers to this and muttered some of them to myself in a huffy sort of way. I may have said ‘follow the money’ out loud at one point in a noisier part of the discussion.

In purely practical terms, selection is based on assessment which is troublesome to use in ways that are simultaneously humane and useful. Our current use, both to measure students and judge schools, has muddied the water so much that National Curriculum levels have been removed. From dirigiste to deregulation in one move, with what mayhem in its wake. Like other schools we are discussing life after levels now that the extraordinary decision has been taken that every school will invent its own system. What do we want to measure? What do we need? What do parents want to know? What will scrutineers want to see? What will partner schools do? What is the relationship between attitudes and work habits and subject knowledge? How can you judge progress in a subject that’s new at year 7, or at GCSE ? Can we measure progress in the arts and PE in the same way as in maths or history? What will work with the well-motivated, the reluctant, the struggler, the lazy, the misunderstood? Politicians love to talk about their own schooling. Some – like Johnson and Tristram Hunt – admit that it was private and privileged. There is a gap in their understanding of other types of schools, which is then compounded by media storms designed to sell news and dominated by those of a similarly narrow background. We are trapped in misunderstandings which have their roots in the deep inequalities of British society, some of which were helpfully uncovered last week by the 1970 British Cohort Survey comprehensively exploding some grammar school myths. May I offer some facts? Most schools use some form of academic selection in their setting processes. Setting is not streaming, but is done by assessing ability in a particular subject (this seems impossibly hard for politicians to grasp; they may be in the wrong set). However, there is no outcomes evidence to distinguish setting from mixed ability teaching: teacher quality is the key. Assessment measures progress and helps design subsequent teaching to accelerate it, which is standard good practice. Attending a grammar school does not confer lasting benefits in terms of university entrance or success as children from comprehensive schools achieve more highly at university than those from other types of schools. However, private schooling is powerfully predictive of gaining a university degree and especially a degree from an elite institution. This is probably because of the double advantage of close links with Oxbridge colleges and a prevalence of graduate parents, the strongest predictor for university success. In 2007 David Willetts – supported by David Cameron - courted lasting unpopularity from the Conservative party by saying:

We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the way to transform the life chances of bright poor kids. This is a widespread belief but we just have to recognise that there is overwhelming evidence that such academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it.

The comprehensive dream can transform lives for all its children. That’s where we’ll get a return on our belief.

Christmas approaches and we’ve bought the red tags and the trees. Perhaps the hope I’ll write on my tag is that education debate might be embellished with facts and evidence in the General Election. Perhaps I’ll tie one to the door of Sanctuary Buildings, SW1.

I like hoo-ha and am a great user of malarkey. I’m fond of kerfuffle, but was shocked when I first saw its spelling. These come to mind in the results season when the tone and atmosphere of the national discourse about A levels has traditionally reached febrile heights. There’s the generation of outrage, the deliberate obfuscation and the scuffling in the undergrowth to see whose figures can match which rigid opinion. Today’s story of a 0.6 per cent increase in the number of A* grades and a decrease of 0.1 per cent in the overall pass rate isn’t really news in any recognisable sense. ‘Exam Results Stable Again’ won’t really generate queues round the block to buy papers. No hoo-ha over exams being easier? No things-ain’t-what-they-used-to-be malarkey? No kerfuffle over too few places for too many students? I may be tempting fate in this early afternoon of results day, but the news seems pretty quiet out there.

Therefore, allow me to fill the space. We’re pretty pleased with our results here at Tallis, our best ever. We’re pleased for our young people who’ve got what they need to go to university and we’re confident that we can support those who’ll rethink their plans. The internet makes the whole UCAS process much simpler and quicker now most young people know if they’ve got into university by the time they come to school to get the results. It’s a bit more humane than it used to be, I think. Is it as good as it could be? Here are a few questions. Wouldn’t post-qualification university application take some more uncertainty out of the system? Universities argue that it would disadvantage academically able applicants from poorer backgrounds, but would it have to? We’d have to change the shape of our year, both in school and university, but isn’t that overdue? Wouldn’t it be more transparent? Isn’t that a good in public life? How well are we served by having competing commercial examination boards? Why are our young people’s futures left up to an (admittedly regulated) market? Is the government going to make a quiet u-turn on the Goveite AS fiasco? When schools and universities agree that AS grades aid transparency in university admission and career planning does it really need to be a political issue? When the Secretary of State for Education Secretary says the government is "lifting the cap on aspiration" what on earth does that mean? Does the quiet news today suggest that education is becoming less of a political football? I’m grateful for an A level results day that hasn’t seen our hard work disparaged by defenders of a system designed to generate an elite rather than educate the nation. I may raise a glass (tonight) to the teachers and parents who have worked, worried and loved our students through to adulthood. I’ll certainly raise one to year 13 themselves who, despite the trials and indignities of adolescence, the incessant fiddling about with education throughout their entire school careers and the ambivalent attitude this society has towards its young, have come through. So here’s to the elated and the tearful, to your futures close to home or in a new city, to the difference you’ll make and the citizens you’ll be. Let’s hope that Tallis really has given you an education to understand the world and change it for the better. Good luck, don’t forget us, and thank you for sharing your lives with us.